Weekend Roundup

07 Aug 2006

Catching up on my RSS feeds for the weekend, I found these interesting things:

More Video on Demand Channels on AOL: Jeff Pulver posted a huge list of channels that have been added to AOL’s in2tv service. Lots of cool stuff, including Pinky and the Brain, which is an awesome show. Problem is, I use a Mac. They use Windows Media to encode the files. I get the dreaded “We’re sorry, content protected by Digital Rights Management is not available on the Macintosh” message. Way to go, AOL! (not)

More Good Press on the Nokia Blogger Relations Program: I know Andy is loving this. Even moreso because it’s his birthday on Tuesday. I’m sure this blog entry on ZDNet will help promote the idea. I tried to delve into why the whole concept of establishing relationships with bloggers is a good idea, but I know I didn’t go into enough depth. That happens when you write blog entries when you should be in bed.

VMWare Expanding to Mac OS X: This entry from an Infoworld Blog suggests that a Mac version of some VMWare products are coming out soon. In fact, if you go to the VMWare site now, you can see on the front page an ad for their upcoming Mac OS X product. From the description, it sounds like they’re aiming at the desktop, e.g. in the same space their VMWare Workstation product plays. I have registered for the beta, which I am looking forward to playing with.

Make Your Own WiFi Hotspot: This article from JIWire advises retail-based businesses on how they might set up a WiFi hotspot and either “make it free” or “make money.” The simplest, cheapest idea for making money would be to get a router from FON. Get their subsidized router, sign up to be a Bill, and you get 50% of the revenue that FON collects. NO muss or fuss for you, and you get paid.

Zillow On Your Mobile: The folks at Zillow have made it possible to get a Zestimate of any given address by sending an email to [email protected] You can theoretically do this via SMS if your service provider supports sending email via SMS (most do). For grins, I did this for my own address and got the value of the house (probably a high estimate), # of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, square footage, and year built. (Thanks to Engadget Mobile for pointing me at it).

Helio Going Contractless for Target Demographic: Again from the folks at Engadget Mobile, Mobile Virtual Network Operator Helio has decided to forgo the ever-painful two-year contract on your mobile service if you have an account on MySpace. Of course, this is for a limited time, but I guess if you wanted to try Helio, now would be the time to try them out. Just make sure you get a MySpace account first.

Is SIPCat The Next Asterisk?: Let me answer this question for Andy, who asked it on his blog: It is the next TrixBox (formerly [email protected]) except they charge you for it and supposedly provide you with an XML API you can use. They say so on their site.

Is Hamachi For Sale?: No, I don’t mean at the fish market, but rather the company Hamachi, which makes a fantastic mediated peer-to-peer VPN program that works on Windows, Linux, and Mac. This is according to a posting by uber-blogger Om Malik.

Broadband over Power Lines gets FCC Approval: In a move that undoubtedly upsets the Amateur Radio operators, Broadband over Power Lines gets approval from the FCC. Of course it will be a few years before we see any massive deployments of BPL within the US, but it’s nice to know there is a possibility of a third player in the residential broadband space.

Game Over For Door Locks: This video on YouTube (in Dutch with English subtitles) demonstrates that just about every lock out there can be opened very easily. Scary stuff.